Google banishes The Pirate Bay

Search engine Google is celebrating killing off file-sharing by an innovative new method which should mean the end of piracy for every

Google has blocked web pages for file-sharing site The Pirate Bay from appearing in its auto-complete search facility. Yep, it appears that Google believes that piracy will be stopped stone dead by making pirates type in their searches into Google. The move means that when users start to type "thepir...", Google does not suggest web pages relating to the site in a drop-down list below.

It is not clear if Google research believes that pirates are too lazy to type in the search for themselves, and will buy the content legally. Google has started censoring certain web links to pirated material in its instant and auto-complete tools in January this year. The unpublished blacklist is understood to include "torrent", "BitTorrent", "uTorrent" and "MegaUpload".

Access to The Pirate Bay is already blocked by all the major UK internet service providers, although users have found various 'workarounds' to circumnavigate the block so the effort is largely useless. Google claims that the auto-complete blacklist is an effective and simple way to curb online piracy.

Google also censors auto-complete on search terms related to "pornography, violence, hate speech, and copyright infringement". However the sites remain indexed and can still be found. A Pirate Bay spokesperson told TorrentFreak that the site was not harmed by Google's "half-baked" attempt to keep people from accessing the file-sharing service. Since Google bought in the ban there had been no change in the site's traffic.